‘The Good Wife’ Recap: Of Pornography and Publicity

In this season’s second episode, “The Good Wife” considers questions of art, pornography, and publicity while Alicia defends a grown-up innocent.

Alicia returns to bond court, and seems much more at home now—though working with a patient judge helps. When Lucca asks Alicia to take one of her cases, she defends Erik Zovatto (Johnny Simmons), who clearly wants Alicia, and the court, to know that he’s guilty of destroying a museum’s work of art—and why he did it.

The piece is a nude photograph of Eric as a child, one of many taken by his mother Phyllis (Amy Irving), a renowned photographer. Erik feels the images have ruined his life. When he and Alicia start a civil suit against the museum to force them to take down the exhibit, Lucca reminds Alicia that she gave her the case, and expects half the revenue for it. The women become partners again.

First order of business is to hire an investigator, something that Cary and Diane also need to do too. (I’d still like to know what happened to the awesome, and mysteriously vanished, Robyn.) Alicia chooses young Amanda Marcassin (Trieste Kelly Dunn), because she reminds Alicia of Kalinda, despite Grace’s feeling that she should hire Jason Crouse (the sexy Jeffrey Dean Morgan) instead. We know this woman is clearly not going to work out, because they wouldn’t cast Jeffrey Dean Morgan for just anything. Amanda screws up badly, twice, refusing to do simple Internet searches and causing Alicia’s formidable opponent, Nancy Crozier (Mamie Gummer) to get a jump on the case, twice. She even cops an attitude when Alicia rightly fires her.

After some courtroom back and forth, considering whether the photography is deemed child pornography, whether the children gave consent to being photographed, and whether their likenesses are allowed to be used as promotional items—not to mention some silliness with the judge recently converting to Islam and suffering serious stomach growling from Ramadan fasting—Erik apparently decides to forgive his mother and either drops the case or settles out of court.

Alicia calls Jason back to hire him as investigator, but Diane had made him an offer. He tells Alicia honestly that he wants to use her offer as leverage with this other company. She offers him $85 an hour, but he tells Diane it’s $200. Diane ups her price to $250, but Jason instead agrees to work with Alicia for $95. Clearly money isn’t as important to him—or perhaps he feels the instant rapport he has with Alicia may be worth his time. Either way, I’m excited by the prospect. Maybe I won’t miss Finn or Will so much.

Meanwhile, Eli’s putting his grand scheme into action, though it’s unclear what he’s ultimately trying to do. There’s some back and forth with Ruth Eastman, who tries to use Eli’s former assistant Nora (Nicole Roderick, who I hope they use more) as a spy, but loyal Nora tells Eli about it. Eli also apologizes to Peter, and takes Alicia to see the head of the Democratic National Committee—the person who caused Alicia’s scandal in the first place. He offers her a position on the board—as long as she votes no in the first election; I suppose just to see how malleable she is. It’s not clear to me why, but Alicia agrees. Wow, I hate politics. Can’t understand why anyone would want to be involved in that world. But this move impresses Peter, so it seems to work well for Eli so far. Hopefully it doesn’t hurt Alicia too much in the process.

Cary tries to remove Howard Lyman from his firm. Despite pushback from Diane, for some reason (she knows how useless Lyman is, so it’s not clear why she’d want to keep him), Cary eventually makes Lyman a problem for Diane so she’s forced to step in. She tries serving as moderator between the two men, but Lyman makes her choose between them, in what David Lee calls “the world’s easiest ultimatum.” I for one hope he’ll actually be gone.

While it’s interesting that they’re following Alicia’s rapid refresh so closely, I find the stories with Cary and Diane a bit of a throwaway. I hope they do more with them. And I don’t fully trust Eli, but I’m curious how it plays out.

What about you, good-wifers? Do you trust Eli, or is he too hell-bent on revenge? Are you glad to have some potential testosterone to replace Will and Finn? Or will that relationship be strictly business? Are you glad the ridiculous Lyman is finally out? Chime in below.

Twitter: @camusr6